books.google.com - In The Second Self, Sherry Turkle looks at the computer not as a "tool," but as part of our social and psychological lives; she looks beyond how we use computer games and spreadsheets to explore how the computer affects our awareness of ourselves, of one another, and of our relationship with the world....http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Second_Self.html?id=--gcphO5TcgC&utm_source=gb-gplus-shareThe Second Self

The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit

In The Second Self, Sherry Turkle looks at the computer not as a "tool," but as part of our social and psychological lives; she looks beyond how we use computer games and spreadsheets to explore how the computer affects our awareness of ourselves, of one another, and of our relationship with the world. "Technology," she writes, "catalyzes changes not only in what we do but in how we think." First published in 1984, The Second Self is still essential reading as a primer in the psychology of computation. This twentieth anniversary edition allows us to reconsider two decades of computer culture-to (re)experience what was and is most novel in our new media culture and to view our own contemporary relationship with technology with fresh eyes. Turkle frames this classic work with a new introduction, a new epilogue, and extensive notes added to the original text.

Interesting study on how we place value and human attributes onto electronic things like computers and Tamagotchi. A bit dated now however, children these days (that I know) of 9-11 do not cry when their Tamagotchi dies, they know it isn't alive.Read full review

About the author (1985)

Sherry Turkle is Abby Rockefeller Mauz? Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and Founder and Director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. A psychoanalytically trained sociologist and psychologist, she is the author of "The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit" (Twentieth Anniversary Edition, MIT Press), "Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, " and "Psychoanalytic Politics: Jacques Lacan and Freud's French Revolution." She is the editor of "Evocative Objects: Things We Think With, Falling for Science: Objects in Mind, " and "The Inner History of Devices, " all three published by the MIT Press.